Preliminary Outcomes of a Telehealth-Delivered Solution Focused Brief Therapy-Single-Session Consultation for Highly Stressed Parents

Parents who experience higher levels of stress are more likely to have poorer self-perception of their parenting ability, parental efficacy, and parenting practices, which can affect the parent-child relationship and increase child behavioral difficulties. Access to evidence-based support for parents experiencing high levels of parenting stress is limited. This open clinical trial examined the feasibility, acceptability/utility, and preliminary efficacy of a telehealth, Solution-Focused Brief Therapy Single-Session Consultation (SFBT-SSC) intervention for parents of school-age children who have high levels of parenting stress. Participants were recruited through social media, a total of 17 parents (mean age 39; 93% female, 73% Caucasian) were enrolled, and 15 completed all study assessments. We evaluated whether hypothesized mechanisms of change (i.e., hope, agency, readiness) improved immediately following the completion of the SFBT-SSC and determined if parental (i.e., stress, empowerment, positive and negative affect) and child (i.e., behavior) outcomes improved 2-weeks following the completion of the SFBT-SSC. Findings indicated a high acceptability and utility among parents who completed the SFBT-SSC session, improvement in hypothesized mechanisms (agency [z = 2.35, p=0.032] and readiness [z = 3.29, p = 0.0023]), and improvement in most key outcomes (parental stress [z=-2.72, p = 0.0045]; child behavior [z=-2.88, p = 0.0062]). Effect sizes for these outcomes were large (d ranged from 1.53 to 3.21). Findings suggest that a telehealth SFBT-SSC can lead to short-term improvements. Future research with large and more diverse samples, longer follow-up periods, and randomized controlled designs is warranted. The study contributes to the understanding of brief, feasible, and accessible interventions targeting parenting stress.